057 -My Acceptance Is Etched In Stone

Who Am I Really?

Kendra’s story is filled with peaks and valleys of emotion. After running far, far away in her teens, Kendra’s adopted mother blamed her for her adopted father’s demise. She and her mother were estranged for years until her adopted mother’s mortality changed their relationship. In reunion, her birth mother accepted her return but kept Kendra a secret. Decades later she had an amazing reunion with her siblings, only to find things were turning upside down at home.

Read Full TranscriptKendra: 00:05 I think that’s why I never really talked about my childhood with my kids. I just thought I’m just going to lock it up, you know, weld it behind this gate and it’s never. It can’t hurt if I don’t talk about it and that was a colossal parenting mistake. I do not recommend doing that at all because it will all come doubling up to the surface when you least expect it.

Voices: 00:31 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon: 00:42 This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis, and on today’s show is Kendra. Kendra lives near Palm Springs, California. Her story is filled with peaks and valleys of emotion. After running far, far away, Kendra’s adopted. Mother blamed her for her adopted father’s demise. She and her mother were estranged for years until her adopted mother’s mortality changed their relationship. In reunion Her birth mother accepted her return, but kept Kendra a secret. Then decades later, she had an amazing reunion with her siblings only to find things were turning upside down at home. This is Kendra’s journey.

Damon: 01:34 Kendra was adopted after one week of life in 1965. Her parents planned on adopting another little boy, but unfortunately they divorced, so Kendra was an only child. She grew up in Torrance, California, and she remembers the day she was told that she was adopted and how she was made to feel.

Kendra: 01:53 I grew up in only child and my mother was an identical twin and her identical twin had a daughter who is nine months older than I was and so that was interesting. I was told I was adopted when I was four years old and it. It kinda came up one day when we were out shopping and my aunt was talking about having my cousin and I asked my mom got having me and I can see the eyes that darted and I knew something was up so they told me, Oh, you’re special chosen. We picked you. I got that speech and I didn’t really know what they were talking about, but the way they said it to me, so special and beautiful like a princess, you know, but yet there was this look in their eyes, like don’t ask any other questions about it. So I thought, well, I’ll get somebody else to explain it to me.

Kendra: 02:41 And I started telling people I was adopted and he would get these horrified look on their faces. Like, oh my goodness, I can’t believe you’re admitting that to me. And that confused me even more. And then one day my mom overheard me telling somebody and she snatched me up by my elbow and said, that’s a private family matter we don’t talk to people about that. So I was completely, I was confused. You told me something that was so beautiful and exciting and then now it’s this, this, this horrible thing. I’m not supposed to tell anybody. What does it mean? And I, I was just, I couldn’t believe it. And I thought I had figured it out one night at dinner because we went out to dinner and she said, I think I’ll choose the special and when my mom ordered chicken, I kid you not. I thought I hatched like an egg for about three years. I did. I thought I had like an egg. No wonder she didn’t want anybody to know.

Damon: 03:40 Kendra attended Chadwick school. The school is featured in the 1981 movie mommy dearest based on the book by Christina Crawford. Christina portrayed her life of physical and mental abuse at the hands of her mother, the famous Hollywood actress Joan Crawford. June, believed her own tough upbringing, made her into the woman she was, but she was unable to have children, was viewed unfavorably by adoption agencies for her multiple divorces and her status as a single woman. So she secured the services of an adoption broker who helped her adopt, Christina and three others.

Kendra: 04:17 And matter of fact, I remember, Christina Crawford, who wrote the book “Mommy Dearest”. The book came out in 19- Oh gosh, I don’t know, 78, something like that. And I remember my mom was horrified. you know she couldn’t believe that she would write such a book that she couldn’t even defend herself. Joan Crawford, and I remember thinking to myself that if she, you know, the book never would have been written and so we never talked about our opposing views on that, on that book, but I can remember that having kind of an impact on me and probably by that time I had figured out what, what adopted meant, that there was another woman and she gave birth to me and I always knew I would search. I knew, I always knew I wanted to know why?

Damon: 05:02 I was really curious about Kendra’s mother who had a twin sister who had her own biological daughter. You’ve probably experienced with twins, that people are always searching for the ways that they’re alike. That was true for Kendra’s mother and her sister and the search for likenesses even cascaded down to Kendra’s cousin, but no one could ever make the family comparisons with Kendra,

Kendra: 05:24 Like, my mother being an identical twin. The looking for similarities you know, I mean, they looked so much like that you’re always searching to try and find yourself in your family members and they would always talk about my cousin looking like this one or that one, and it stung, it hurt. You know I always searched for that for. I think that’s pretty common in adtopeess to seach for somebody who looks like you. It’s a yearning.

Damon: 05:51 Kendra’s mother was divorced and she remarried a widower. They moved into a big beautiful home and that was unsettling for Kendra.

Kendra: 06:00 For me, I was always scared in my childhood. I always felt really alone and especially when we moved into this big house master double doors would close every night and I felt so alone and so afraid in that big huge house.

Damon: 06:12 her mother started her own business, so as an entrepreneur she was working 16 hour days. Of course, while her mother was working a lot and parental supervision was scarce, Kendra got into a little bit of trouble. She said it felt frustrating that she could never do anything right in her mother’s eyes. Her mother started sending her away every summer to relative’s houses and friends. It all made Kendra feel unwanted.

Kendra: 06:38 I gotta tell you, I kind of felt like, like I was something that she had gotten that was supposed to be part of this beautiful dream for her and I was just a constant reminder of what she didn’t have the life that she didn’t. She didn’t get to have with my father, because he didn’t play by the rules.

Damon: 06:56 How do you mean?

Kendra: 06:59 My Dad, him and my mom thought that my father was going to have a political career and they were going to have a child and my father was kind of the cocktails after work and you know, he, he had girlfriends and you know, he had girls on this side and my mom finally had had enough and that’s when she left, you know, that’s not the way it was supposed to go down in her eyes. I think, you know, if he would have only played by the rules, they could have had this beautiful life together and he wouldn’t do it. Yeah. So I kind of felt like something she got saddled with when it didn’t work out. I don’t know how to explain that. Yeah.

Damon: 07:38 Her mother went on to be very successful at her escrow business and Kendra acknowledges that it must’ve been very difficult at that time when career development was not great for women. Still. Kendra was shuffled around in her freshman year of high school. She was sent to live with her father in Pasadena. It seemed like it would be great because she loved her dad and he was fun, but he was having medical issues at the time and he had set out to prove that he could parent Kendra more effectively than her mother. He clamped down on her grades and discipline, ending up at odds with one another, Kendra returned to her mother’s house.

Kendra: 08:15 Then I went back to visit my father when my 10th grade year had started. And what happened was I went out with some friends and it got later and later and I was too scared to go home, and I ran away.

Damon: 08:30 Really? Were you up to something nefarious or had you just broken the rule so badly? And with each passing minute it got worse and worse?

Kendra: 08:37 Yes. That’s, that’s the way it felt but. Actualy a guy came by and um, we went to go do some stuff and go hang out and stuff and this was the guy in high school that I always wanted to date so to speak. And so I was having a great time and it just kept getting later and I’d already missed my best to go back home. I just was scared to death. I was just afraid. I knew I was going to get yelled at, I wasn’t going to get beat or anything, but I was just, I just got too scared to go home. And so I had a friend call my mom because I didn’t want her to think it was in a ditch somewhere and she lit into my friend like no other. And I was like, Oh, I’m definitely not going home now. Well, I ended up flying to Hawaii and staying with my best friend moved there and I. Yes. And I went and I got enrolled in private school and I was living life in Hawaii.

Damon: 09:27 What!?

Kendra: 09:28 Yes! My mom came and got me and then she sees my best friend’s parents were taking a minor against across state lines without parental consent. Oh my gosh.

Damon: 09:37 Kendra was gone for two months. She didn’t go home at all. Her mother found out that Kendra was in Hawaii after Kendra sent a letter to a friend and her friend...